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EDITORIAL
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Updated: Apr. 10, 2012 | 10:16 a.m.
At a White House meeting Monday, President Obama -- obviously concerned that he can't go on forever blaming the nation's dire economic straits on his predecessor, George W. Bush -- twisted the arms of the nation's top bankers, insisting that they start lending again, on the theory this will boost the economy.
"My main message in today's meeting was very simple: that America's banks received extraordinary assistance from American taxpayers to rebuild their industry and now that they're back on their feet, we expect an extraordinary commitment from them to help rebuild our economy," the president said after the meeting.
But, "Major Wall Street players say they are caught between the urging of the White House to lend and the equally forceful guidance from federal regulators not to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers," the Web site Politico reported Sunday. "It was willy-nilly lending to unqualified subprime mortgage customers, after all, that triggered the global economic meltdown."
Weirdly, President Obama managed to vocalize the bankers' damned-either-way conundrum himself, at the end of this little political Kabuki, adding, "No one wants banks making the kinds of risky loans that got us into this situation in the first place," he said.
Ah. So they need only make more loans, lots more loans -- to businesses now in shakier condition than they were three years ago -- all without doing anything "risky." Got it?
In fact, Mr. Obama's stern-faced impression of Phineas T. Bluster can be attributed in part to his own embarrassment before his core left-wing constituency. "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street," Mr. Obama intoned on CBS's "60 Minutes" this weekend -- though it's increasingly clear that's precisely what he's done.
The bad loans that led to the financial meltdown came about because Democrats made it a matter of policy that every American has an inalienable right to a home mortgage, punishing banks that refused to make high-risk loans, while meantime authorizing the quasi-governmental entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to back high-risk loans with an implied guarantee of taxpayer bailouts.
What the market needs is less government meddling, which has never accomplished anything but to lengthen economic corrections into full-scale Depressions.
Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, did not attend the mandatory lecture, blaming "bad weather."
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Good job, GH.
Everyone knew it was coming.
But, they'd lose votes if they actually did something about it.
The government specifically telling banks how to loan money is just stupid. The Clintons started it. Bush didn't do anything effective to stop it. And, Obama is pushing it again.
Just like Vietnam, don't we ever learn?
@ Think,
How simple it is to just blame one idiot when we have so many from both parties.
Are you truly able to look at what we call our government and believe one party has more of an interest in representing its citizenship than the other?
Either both represented the special interest and the elite wealthy, proof is in the campaign funds to both parties.
Or one party is domineering with the other being completely inapt.
So either the dems are just as corrupted or completely inapt, either way, the proof of failure of government is the situation of our country today.
You can choice ignorance and delusion or accurately look at both party’s.
If the first link I posted about the dems and the housing insanity doesn't work try this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yga7TlsA-1A
@MTS,
And for anyone else that feels the democrats are not as guilty as the republicans and Bush for our economic disaster.
Listen to Frank, Waters and Meeks for yourself and learn as they shut down any attempt at ending the insanity, made worse by Clinton signing the packaging of these loans with good loans in 99.
http://www.youtube.com/user/tellusmore#p/f/15/Yga7TlsA-1A
Now for the non partisan question:
Can anyone name a Senator either Republican or Democrat that really tried to reform Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac?
Senator Obama?
Senator Reid?
Senator Ensign?
I'm not a huge fan of President Bush but everyone blaming him for Congress's mistakes is getting old.
Want to really change America? Vote out all the incumbants that did nothing despite numerous warnings.